I am looking at building two Mini-ITX systems, both with different requirements. I'd like to get the same hardware for both to make 'support' easier - one will be replacing an older Pentium 4 Prescott Shuttle in my parents' house. I'm looking specifically at Mini-ITX because I would like a box with low power usage that is as quiet as possible, as at least one will be in a living room. Note that the two boxes will not be located in the same place and will not (as yet) be talking to each other, so I'm not looking to combine them into one system.

On to the requirements ...

Box #1:

SSH Server for remote access.

XM PCR control software to tune the XM PCR over USB. This has little overhead, so it probably isn't that much of an issue.

IceCast (or similar) streaming from line-in to send the audio to other computers in the house. This is the most processor-intensive task that has me worried about picking a good processor.

Apache to act as a remote interface for controlling XM and accessing the IceCast streams.

SAMBA file sharing to use as a small backup server for Windows machines.

Box #2:

SSH Server for remote access.

VPN using OpenVPN or the new features of OpenSSH. This would have at most 1 simultaneous user.

irssi+screen

Small backup server using either SAMBA or scp/sftp.

General messing around - I am awaiting a used copy of Absolute OpenBSD.

The SSH and VPN requirements have me thinking that it might be worth getting a board with PadLock hardware-accelerated encryption. I will be picking up 1GB of memory for each system since it is so cheap. Storage will probably be a hard drive at this point - it looks like some of the Western Digital Scorpio drives are quiet. The servers will either be on 24/7 or be on during the daytime and shut down at night, then brought up again in the morning with Wake-on-LAN. I haven't decided that part yet.

Does anyone have any motherboard suggestions that will meet my requirements? Thanks

I looked at this thread earlier and really like the low-power draw of the Soekris and Alix boards, but they don't come with any onboard sound which is a problem for Box #1. I think I did see a Mini-ITX board on there, so I'll have to go back and investigate.

I saw a few mentions of this new board and from what I gather the North bridge uses up a lot more power than it people feel it should. It's hard to tell if that's just people being picky or if it's a real issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

Newegg doesn't do international shipping.

Remember, on a forum with users from all over the globe.. don't post links to stores only available in the US.

I'm in the US at least, but I understand where you're coming from. I can at least search for part numbers at a few places

I came across a Pico-ITX motherboard and case combo today that retails for $300 USD. It is the VIA ARTiGO and includes the VIA EPIA PX10000G motherboard It's a little pricey, but power draw is minimal - one review of the motherboard noted 14W idle and 16W at full load.

I think it's going to take me a while to go through all of this. Keep the suggestions coming

* I think the install will be easier if I just buy a drive and use that. Plus, as the burner was about the same price as a reader, I should be able to also burn backups to DVD right from there. However, if it's easy enough to do a network install and upgrade, omitting this part would save me about $45 USD.

** I haven't decided whether I need a 60W or 80W power supply yet, but I may just get the 80W to be on the safe side. I did see that someone has a parts list for a similar server where they used a 80W power supply. However, their system does have a desktop drive. Link to their setup: click. I settled on this case from a price perspective and I haven't seen anything suggesting that the fan is loud.

I would also suggest that if you are not in an immediate hurry to hold off for a couple of months. By the end of the year the new mini-itx 2.0 motherboards are supposed to hit the stores. Among other updates they are supposed to include the ability to have up to a minimum of 2GB of RAM. See more on this standard from VIA.

As far as motherboards for mini-itx, VIA and Jetway seem to be the two big manufacturers and VIA is the dominant CPU manufacturer. Gigabyte has released two mini-itx boards, but they are a little hard to try and find. Also, AMD has their Geode line that is meant for mini-itx applications - but VIA is much more advanced than anyone in this application. If you want the native encryption, VIA is the only one currently including that with the CPU.

You can easily do a network install - or probably even easier, an install from USB media. If you go with an optical drive, I would say go with the 80W power supply just to be safe, even though the 60W should be enough. You might also want to consider the Pico-PSU.

Morex is a good case manufacturer for mini-itx cases. The 3688 is nice, but if you going with the fanless CPU, why not a fanless case? I myself like the T-3300 and the T-3310.

I don't know what your storage requirements are, but if they are too high, you might consider using CF as a storage medium. We have a thread on that subject here - CF as a *BSD hard drive?. We also have a thread on small systems here - Soekris experiences.

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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

Thanks JMJ_coder. I completely missed the T-3300 and T-3310 in the list of cases. According to the Logic Supply site, the LN motherboard will fit in the T-3300 but not the T-3310. I guess it may have something to do with the size of the heatsink. Like you said, it definitely makes sense to go with a fanless case if I have a fanless motherboard. As all of the cases I've been looking at come with power supplies, I may stick with them for the moment, though the Pico looks very nice.

I have been leaning towards the hard drive rather than a CF for space more than anything. I'll have to think about this some more. The CF would use less power and would probably be cheaper than the HDD, but it does have limited storage space.

The USB install sounds promising. I have a 1 GB stick lying around here somewhere. I'll have to look around and see what this involves. I did see that the above cases do not have room for CD/DVD-ROM drives, but I think as long as I can do another type of install, it should be fine. I would only really need the CD/DVD drive once during the install - I can always back up my data from the network and burn it on one of my other computers.

As far as the timeline for ordering my system, I'd like to get it done pretty soon rather than wait for the new lineup. Then again I guess there's always something better coming out, so I might as well bite the bullet and just get my system now

I have been leaning towards the hard drive rather than a CF for space more than anything. I'll have to think about this some more. The CF would use less power and would probably be cheaper than the HDD, but it does have limited storage space.

Well, not necessarily. While it has its benefits, being inexpensive is not one of them. I bought a 2GB CF card (SanDisk Ultra II) on sale for $20 and a Syba IDE adapter from newegg for $12 - that's $32 for 2GB. This will be to test this technology in my old 486 system. If you want to go with SATA (which I think I'll do in my mini-itx system), Addonics just came out with a nice new card for $80 plus I'll get two 8GB cards (SanDisk Extreme III) currently selling for $92 each, which I'll run in RAID1 (the card does this - RAID0, RAID1 or Concatanate). That's about $264 for 8GB - not for those looking for a cheap solution. Even a SSD will be cheaper and more storage. I'm just very interested in this technologies potential (theoretically, you could carry around your computer in your wallet - with the right setup).

The USB install sounds promising. I have a 1 GB stick lying around here somewhere. I'll have to look around and see what this involves. I did see that the above cases do not have room for CD/DVD-ROM drives, but I think as long as I can do another type of install, it should be fine. I would only really need the CD/DVD drive once during the install - I can always back up my data from the network and burn it on one of my other computers.

Another potential is to use an external CD/DVD and connect via usb - then only plug it in when you need to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by twisted_steel

As far as the timeline for ordering my system, I'd like to get it done pretty soon rather than wait for the new lineup. Then again I guess there's always something better coming out, so I might as well bite the bullet and just get my system now

I would normally agree, but this is a _major_ update to a whole new standard. And, for me at least, waiting the extra time for the 2GB of RAM (a big and much needed improvement in my mind) is worth the wait (besides, I have to wait a month or two until I get my money ).

Good luck.

__________________
And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

Slightly off topic given that the OP is wanting to look for desktop alternatives, but for a dedicated-purpose system, Alix2C3 motherboards are running ~$137US & with very simple cases running less than ~$20US. Given that these motherboards have three network interfaces, a redundant CARP fail-over configuration between two systems could be realized for roughly $400US.

The ALIX, Soekris, and similar boards are extremely tempting, but I think they are outside of my requirements. I may revisit them down the road once I get a house and make a proper network. It looks like they would work very well as firewalls/routers/vpn, but would need another server on the network for file storage, etc. I don't have any other servers here at the moment - just a laptop and desktop.

Slightly off topic given that the OP is wanting to look for desktop alternatives, but for a dedicated-purpose system, Alix2C3 motherboards are running ~$137US & with very simple cases running less than ~$20US. Given that these motherboards have three network interfaces, a redundant CARP fail-over configuration between two systems could be realized for roughly $400US.

Slightly off topic given that the OP is wanting to look for desktop alternatives, but for a dedicated-purpose system, Alix2C3 motherboards are running ~$137US & with very simple cases running less than ~$20US. Given that these motherboards have three network interfaces, a redundant CARP fail-over configuration between two systems could be realized for roughly $400US.

The price for an Alix is unbeatable.
If you want to get more performance and less power consumption than an Intel Atom you should take a look at the new AMD Athlon 64 2000+ which beats the Atom (compared it to Alix|Geode LX there's only better performance ). With the Athlon 64 2000+ you can use every AM2 or AM2+ Board incl. the MiniITX Variations.
If Alix does the job you need it for it's very cheap but if you need more power search for the new AMD.

Unfortunately I can't find a report about this CPU in English only one in German. Google seems to be unresponsive...